Monday, May 4, 2009

Introducing 'Papal Pull' the new improved condom

The encouragement to procreate by religious despots is a policy they should seriously reconsider if they want to hold on to power.

Elections are due to be held in Iran in June to decide which leader is going to lead the country out of the first decade of the 21st century. Iran is a fascinating country. The world’s first great empire in the 6th century BCE under Cyrus the Great-who some claim to have instituted the first charter of human rights-the country has nevertheless seen a long succession of despots, with the exception of the progressive Mohammad Mossedegh but the CIA put an end to him in 1953. The first thing that strikes one about Iran is its sheer youth. Over 70 percent of the Iranian population is under 30 and over 60 percent of those attending university are women.

President Obama’s address to the Iranian nation a few weeks ago was astute, particularly his decision to use the medium of the internet which the Iranian government is unable to fully control. When the Ayatollah Khomeini assumed absolute power after the 1979 revolution, he encouraged couples to have big families. He also lowered the legal age of marriage for women to 9 years! Khomeini was following the example of the Prophet Mohammad who married a 6 year old girl named Ayesha and apparently consummated the relationship when she was 9! In other words, Mohammed was a paedophile.

There are currently over 700,000 blogs in Iran and this number is increasing in the thousands every day

The result of Khomeini's procreation policy was a population explosion over the past thirty years during which time the demographical figures of Iran doubled. The problem for the clerical oligarchy now is that the majority of the population is composed of young people eager to escape the stultifying shackles of Islamic tyranny. The difference between Iran now and Iran ten years ago when Khatamei was opening up the country to progress, is the omnipresent internet. The internet has become such a phenomenon among Iran’s youth that the secret service, the notorious ‘etellat’ are no longer able to employ enough people to filter the sites and control the flow of information.

As David Macwilliams has illustratively pointed out in his book The Pope’s Children, the pontiff’s visit coincided with a baby boom

There are currently over 700,000 blogs in Iran and this number is increasing in the thousands every day. The blogosphere phenomenon has become so all-pervasive in Iranian society that both the Ayatollah himself as well as president Athmadinejad now have blogs. If you do a search in Wikipedia you can find a list of Iranian blogs in English both from inside and outside the country. Many of them make for interesting reading. For many Iranians the daily oppression is so intense, that keeping a blog and sharing one’s thoughts with the world is a form of catharsis and relief. The ironic aspect about this surge in the country’s youth is their disillusionment with the clerical oligarchy, the very people who encouraged their creation. One could argue that a similar phenomenon happened in Ireland 30 years ago. Was not the year of the Islamic Revolution also the year of Pope John Paul’s visit to Ireland? As David Macwilliams has illustratively pointed out in his book The Pope’s Children, the pontiff’s visit coincided with a baby boom.

In a sense, the encouragement to procreate by religious despots is a policy they should seriously reconsider if they want to hold on to power. Once you encourage a baby boom there is a strong possibility that that new generation will reject you and all you stand for. This is to a certain extent what happened in Ireland in the case of Catholicism and it is already happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran. On the question of contraception, the Ayatollah Khomenei seemed to have realised the danger of his earlier policy of encouraging procreation. He later came out in favour of contraception and condoms are now widely available in the Islamic Republic of Iran with the divine blessing of the imams.

This mandatory contraception policy would entail the Pontifex Maximus transforming himself into the Pro-durex Seximus, as it were

In this sense it is strange that the present Pope should be spreading disgraceful lies about condoms in Africa and denouncing an innocent sexually abused 9 year old girl in Brazil for having an abortion; strange not in an ideological sense but more in terms of totalitarian strategy. Of course, it is all part of the Big Lie which I spoke about last week. But if the church wants to hold on to power in developing countries for the coming generations, then it should be encouraging contraception and abortion. For the less young people there are, the more power for the religious despots.

For the less young people there are, the more power for the religious despots

The key then for the survival of religious tyranny would be the promotion of these two concepts. This mandatory contraception policy would entail the Pontifex Maximus transforming himself into the Pro-durex Seximus, as it were. Vatican inc. could launch a lucrative contraceptive marketing campaign; they could call the new condom ‘Papal Pull’ with the caption :“Make divine love with Papal Pull, a condom proved and tested to stop the sexually transmitted disease of life. Call your parish priest today ! Terms and conditions apply” They could even publish their message on the condom packets just like the Government warning on cigarette boxes: “Church warning: Pre-marital or extra-marital sex seriously increases your chances of going to hell!”.